About Me

Green Home Improvements .info is written by Charles Faust. Charles has been in the home improvement industry since the early 1990's and has owned his own company for a little over 10 years. This blog was created to show Charles' efforts in making his lifestyle more "Green" and how his product selections for his clients are becoming "Greener".

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My search for solar power continues, this is part 2 of hopefully a bunch of articles about my switching over to solar power. Last week I mentioned my interest in a Solio solar powered charger and today I bought one. I will post my results in a couple weeks once I am able to fully charge it a few times and test how many things I can charge with it. Of course today was raining and the sun was hiding so I took a few pictures in my kitchen.

As you can see, the Solio solar powered charger comes complete with a wide assortment of attachments for most of the small devices that it can charge. It also comes with a wall charger for any cheaters that want to charge it at home. The unit itself is very rugged and while I am not going to drop it, I am sure that it would survive a fall. The thought of me being able to use the sun to charge my phones, GPS, and my Palm Pilot is exciting! This solar charger will have a place on all of my camping and sailing trips.

As you can see, the Solio solar powered charger fits in the palm of you hand. While you could walk around with a solar powered charger in your pocket, I might suggest leaving it out in the sun so it can charge. If you are looking for a portable solar panel you can use this link for a discount: Take 10% of at Solio.com today! Use coupon code: EcoGift10

I’m sort of new to solar panels but from what I know so far it would take about a long day of full sun to charge a phone. An average phone would only have the room to hold 1/3 of the solar panel room as the solio charger. If my math is correct it would take 9 hours for a full charge. We would just need to get people to mount their phones on their hats. Speaking of which you can now buy solar powered backpacks!

Flipper, I ended up buying it from REI since they were running a members coupon that would of saved me $20. Little did I know that they would run an expired coupon on their website and not honor it. I was going to state in the article where I bought it from but I am waiting to see if REI will honor the coupon or miss out on my business over their mistake.